 Wealth-income ratios in a small, open economy: The Netherlands, 1854–2019Simon J. Toussaint, Amaury de Vicq, Michail Moatsos and Tim van der Valk European Economic Review, 2025, vol. 178, issue C Abstract: We construct and analyze household wealth and its composition for The Netherlands since 1854. The household wealth-income ratio followed the familiar U-shaped pattern over the 20th century. The wealth-income ratio increased in the 19th century, driven by industrialization and booming private foreign investments, to a peak of 700% around 1880. In contrast to other countries, the wealth-income ratio remained high up until 1929. We construct the first series on colonial wealth in the literature and show that colonial and other foreign investment account for most of the gap with other countries in the pre-WWII period. The initial post-war decline of the ratio is driven by rapid income growth. The increase in the ratio since the 1970s has been mainly driven by the large capital-funded pension system. Housing plays only a secondary role in net wealth accumulation due to significant mortgage debt. Keywords: Wealth distribution; Wealth composition; Household wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:178:y:2025:i:c:s0014292125001497 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105099 Access Statistics for this article European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier |
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